Some Potential Errata on Turkey & Iran

Two quick potential errata I want to point out from the past few posts I've had that relate to Turkey & Iran (I say "potential" because they are not factually wrong, but run somewhat counter to my recent predictions:)

Turkey: The Kurds of northern Syria have won a great deal of autonomy since the Syrian government has pulled back to Aleppo and Damascus. The Kurds seem less interested in being a key part of the opposition (they make up 9% of the population and likely feel that they would be marginalized in the new government), and more likely are looking to set up an autonomous zone like is found in Iraq. Lots of interesting implications if this happens, including the possibility of those two autonomous zones becoming the beginnings of a de facto Kurdish state.

There is a spike of rebel activity in southern Turkey, likely designed to take advantage of Turkish distractions in Syria and to build momentum for the development of a Greater Kurdistan. Initial thoughts suggest that this rebel activity might cause Turkey to reconsider their involvement in Syria, but they are likely "in too deep" to pull back, and may be hoping to turn a win in Syria into a means of containing the Syrian Kurds further.

Iran: I mentioned that the Arab Middle East is, in general, opposed to Iran's influence, but some recent behavior shows this isn't entirely likely:

• Iraq, which is ruled by its Shiite majority, may be helping Iran beat economic sanctions, which if true would suggest a tentative alliance.
• Egypt's Morsi will be visiting an Iranian conference on Syria (and other topics), suggesting an attempt to thaw relations (a move I don't quite understand, but will think about)

All worth thinking about. Clearly a fairly complicated region. Looking forward to any thoughts you guys have.

The Syrian Uprising Part IV: Options for Foreign Intervention

Alright: time to pick up right where we left off. Luckily, the timing is good for The Syrian Uprising Part IV: Options for Foreign Intervention.

The outcome of Syria's bloody civil war has powerful implications for the regional balance of the Middle East, and the influence of great powers in the area. Besides simple humanitarian impulses, states with the power to intervene certainly have the interest to do so. Over the past 6 months since last posting, we've seen little in the way of overt action compared to the Liby aconflict, but we have seen a fair amount of diplomatic and covert movement that reveals the motivations and intentions of different states. We'll take a look by state:

Turkey:

Turkey has bet far and away the most on the victory of the Free Syrian Army, openly providing weaponry, sanctuary, and intelligence to the movement. Turkey is waging a very explicit proxy war on Damascus, and is willing to invest the capital and risk to win.

Turkey's motivation is part of a larger strategy to establish dominance over the region. After rejection by the European Union, Turkey turned back to the Middle East, an area that it dominated for hundreds of years until its defeat in the First World War. Turkey's economy and military strength have grown as it has liberalised and accepted foreign investment--at the same time, many of its traditional rivals have been torn by internal conflict and strife (Egypt, Iraq, Syria). Iran remains as its primary rival (Saudi Arabia has great influence as well, though the Sauds are currently in an uneasy alliance with the Turks against Iran), and dismantling the Iranian-backed Assad regime would be a huge blow to Iran's regional power (as an added bonus for Turkey, Iran would lose key supply lines into Lebanon to support Hezbollah). Additionally, Turkey hopes to ally closely enough with the Syrian Opposition that it is able to bake its influence into the formation of a new government.

Really, Turkey has a lot to gain and little to lose--even if the Assad regime should win, it doesn't have the means to retaliate against Turkey (it does not have the influence in the PKK or the financial/military means left to make the Kurds a more serious problem for Turkey). 

The United States:

The US is currently very aligned with Turkey's goals (dismantling Hezbollah and dealing a blow to Iran), so it's allying with the Turks when it might otherwise be quietly trying to make sure that Islamism/Jihadism doesn't take over Syria. The other note about US behavior is that it is trying to set itself up as a long-term "good guy" in the Middle East, and it sees supporting the Arab Spring as a way into the hearts of the inhabitants of the region (in particular, it was "burned" for supporting the Mubarak regime too long in Egypt and doesn't want to repeat that mistake).

Secretary of State Clinton is currently working with Turkey to determine whether it's going to use fighters in a No-Fly Zone over Syria, making US intervention in Syria extremely similar to its work in Libya and neutralizing Assad's jets and attack helicopters. The move would also allow similar scope creep to the Libya mission, in which NATO air units attacked tanks and other ground installations in Syria (under the guise of protecting their own assets). 

Currently, the US is nearly certainly using the CIA to conduct covert operations to support the rebels with advice and intelligence. The CIA is unlikely involved directly in the fighting, but would be able to coordinate airstrikes if Turkey and the US decided to launch their air power in the area. This kind of support could be a turning point in the war, just as it was in Libya. Aleppo would become the temporary "capital" of the opposition, just as Benghazi was. 

Additionally, the United States and Turkey are actively and publicly discussing the Syria "post-game," should the regime fall (which Turkey and the US are at least calling inevitable). This open discussion publicly declares that the US will be helping Turkey extend its influence into Syria in order to stabilize it and make it relatively friendly... without the US needing to get caught up in the dirtier details of the operation.

The Arab States:

The OIC (Organization of Islamic States) has booted Syria from the group over its response to the uprising, and the Arab League has called on Assad to step down. Much of the reasoning here is likely to show their own people that they don't support oppressive regimes (as this would likely spark unrest in their own states), but many of the Arab League states (Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and Bahrain primarily) have a similar desire to see Iran weakened. 

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have openly declared that they are arming and funding the opposition. They have the option to become further involved if there is external military intervention. These two states represent the Arabs' most concerted efforts to be able to exert influence in a post-war Syria, in part to keep Turkish influence limited.

Iran:

Iran's motivations are made clear by the behavior of its enemies, above. Iran currently feels ganged-up-on. It is. Iran is short on "legitimate" allies and Syria is one of its last. Iran would lose almost all influence in the Mediterranean if Syria fell and was replaced by an unfriendly regime (which would be almost certain). 

Iran has stood by Syria throughout the civil war, and will continue to do so until the end. Because there is essentially no chance of an Iran-friendly regime arising in Syria, Iran does not need to hedge its bets--it is all-in with the Assad regime.

To that end, Iran is providing Syria with what weapons and funding it can to keep the regime together. Odds are good that Iran has also sent black flag militias to supplant Syria's more regular forces. Iran's best hope is a crushing victory in Aleppo that gives the government an opportunity to get its feet back under itself.

Russia:

Russia has a naval base in Syria and thus a great deal to lose if an unfriendly regime should arise--Russia's support of the Assad regime so far would make this likely should Assad fall. While Russia does not depend entirely on Syria for Mediterranean access (it has Sevastopol in Ukraine), it is a key port by which Russia remains relevant in the Middle East. 

Russia has stopped providing weapons to Syria (it was previously), but it has deployed warships to the area. These ships are unlikely an attempt to stop a No-Fly Zone--US and allied fighters would launch from Syria (rather than the sea), and any attempt at an air war with US forces would end quickly and badly for the Russian military. More likely, these ships are in part symbolic, in part designed to defend the base should it come under attack, and in part a means of evacuation for Russian troops and Syrian VIPs, if necessary. Unlike the US, Russia almost certainly cannot field forces directly in the area--while the US would be halting the sorties of an unpopular regime, Russia's only options are to attack civilian populations.

Russia's best hope to keep the Syrian regime alive is to use diplomatic pressure to prevent direct US/Turkish intervention. There is a fair chance that the Syrian government's current siege in Aleppo could break the back of the opposition, given no direct military attacks on the forces that give Assad an advantage--namely, major hardware. 

Israel:

Israel's best move in the short term is to hold onto the Golan Heights and otherwise stay out of the war. It obviously has a great interest in seeing Hezbollah lose its primary sources of support, and to see a major weakening of military strength in its north. 

The greatest risk of any Israeli movement (or comment) on the matter is diplomatic: new regimes with Islamist influence (Iraq, Egypt, Libya) are still figuring out how they'll interact with the Israeli regime, and Israel's primary strategy with these states is to give them every reason to be friendly.

In the post-game, the biggest risk for Israel will be the potential proliferation of chemical weapons into the hands of Jihadists that are part of the opposition forces. Israel is preparing to enter Syria if needed to secure them. Ideally, this would be left to Turkey or one of the Arab states, but Israel would be willing to take the diplomatic blow in order to make sure these are safe. 

China:

China's primary motivator will continue to be (as it has been since the Civil War) the preservation of the right of the state to manage its internal affairs. China has little interest in the Assad regime directly, but we'll see it continue to oppose direct foreign intervention, because China sees the conflict as internal, and therefore not something which other states have a right to interfere with. Historically, this is important for China because of its "Century of Shame," where foreign domination had China on its knees until the Communists won the civil war in 1949. China's own need to potentially deal harshly with internal unrest, as well as a simple historical sense of insecurity, make its position on the Syria matter fairly straightforward. 

International Jihadists:

Foreign fighters have flooded quickly into Syria, hoping to take down the largely secularist Baath party and influence the installation of an Islamist or Jihadist government there. Currently, despite regional and Western fears of Jihadist influence, they only have serious power in Somalia (elsewhere, they are a frustration for individual states but are not in control of any real resources), and Syria would be a win that could set up a second base of operations. Frankly, Turkey and Israel are very unlikely to stand for it, and will likely intervene further if there is a Jihadist takeover.

It's worth keeping in mind that regime change would have long-term implications that not all actors may be considering as closely as they should. If we cite George Friedman's The Next 100 Years, he predicts that Turkey will successfully expand its influence throughout the Middle East (and eventually the Balkans) to become the United States' primary rival. To support Turkey's relative takeover of Syria would hasten that--or at least make it more likely. Additionally, the promotion of the legitimacy of outside intervention in regime change may come back to haunt the West, as actors like Russia or Iran cite Western-built precedent for their own regime-change operations. There is significant risk for the US and other Western states investing in changing the Syrian regime, but certainly short-term upside in pushing back Iran's expanding influence. 

Foggofwar's Status

Dear Readers,

I've been delinquent in giving you an explanation for both the lack of posts and the travesty that has adopted my former domain name. Here's the short version:

After changing credit cards, my auto-renew with Godaddy wasn't working...
Godaddy kindly emailed me, but it ended up in the spam folder...
I lost the domain name and it was picked up by whatever spam / blogmill service now owns it.

Sadly, they're taking advantage of all the links to the old domain to get traffic. What's particularly heinous is they're under the very transparent guise of trying to help PTSD sufferers. This is fairly disgusting. My request for any of you linking to the old site: please kill the links or change your them to link here, foggofwar.blogspot.com. Losing the traffic is painful, but seeing these guys succeed is tragic.

Anyway, there's good news: after some melancholy about the whole issue (in which I more or less gave up and just stopped posting), I've been convinced to get back at it.

So we're going to rebuild Foggofwar. As long as you guys want to keep reading, I'll keep writing. My ops consultant alter ego keeps me fairly busy, so don't expect posting frequency like the glory days of 2008/2009 for some time...

But we're back. Tell your friends. http://foggofwar.blogspot.com

--Erik, for Foggofwar.

The Syrian Uprising: Part III, "Prospects for Opposition Victory"

Today we continue the third installment of our four-part series on Syria: Prospects for Opposition Victory.

First, let's define victory for the opposition. Most importantly, they want Assad gone. Assad is unlikely to step down in any meaningful way without being toppled completely. If we look to Egypt and Yemen, both have changed figureheads, but the regimes have essentially stayed intact (Egypt remains ruled by the Army; Saleh's VP was the only candidate for president in Yemen, and his sons still hold hihg posts in the military). So victory will mean toppling the regime, and ousting a number of powerful individuals who benefit greatly from staying in power.

After that, "victory" gets complicated. The Syrian opposition wants to build a constitutional democracy, and this likely means ousting the current military regime, which (like in Egypt) is different from Assad in the sense that it is loyal to itself and will not roll over if Assad is to go. Great. To actually have that monopoly, the Free Sryian Army (FSA) will need to remain a united force that decisively establishes itself as the monopoly on violent power in the country. In Libya, the NTC military forces have split up into various regional militias that are struggling with each other for power. This stage, "winning the peace," will be harder.

As for the war itself: Syria is not fighting an effective counter-insurgency war. The US learned (the hard way) in long slogs in Afghanistan & Iraq that armed opposition groups must be won over and included in the political process. Paritcularly, it is clear that army defectors and even civilian instigators will be killed if caught, and this means that now, many people's lives fundamentally depend on opposition victory--and these people will fight until the end, unless there is a credible move to provide some reconciliation or amnesty, and Assad likely no longer has that credibility. What Egypt and Yemen learned is that disposing of the "face" of the old regime can be an extremely effective move in (at least temporarily) quelling unrest. Syria is practicing neither of these, and will likely be unable to simply crush the opposition into cooperation.

The way things are going, it looks like the Assad regime has less than even odds of weathering the uprising and sanctions. The biggest risk to the regime, right now, is that its foreign currency reserves are starting to deplete. It's spending its money at a faster rate than it can funnel in through Iran and other allied sources. Sanctions often don't work, but Syria is facing these sanctions with a very small set of allies helping them, as well as an active war that is draining its treasury.

The end-game for the regime, if it comes, would be a high-level defection of some sort--someone with military influence that loses confidence that the path to their personal prosperity is with the Assad regime (or, heaven forbid, has a change of conscience about the shelling of civilians). I'm not sure how likely this is, but again--I'd give it greater than 50%, due to the strength of the sanctions, the persistence of the opposition movement (and their incentive for their lives to continue to persist), and the seeming volume of military defection. The last of which means not only that the opposition will have the guns to continue fighting (and are almost certainly being supplied by allies in Turkey, and possibly the CIA/Mossad/etc) and that the military leaders will be faced with the fact that continuing to kill civilians will sow greater dissent among the ranks.

This high-level defection would bring with it either a straight coup or a more protracted fight. A coup is more likely--Assad will certianly have military leadership doubting him enough that they could want to be at the front edge of a seemingly inevitable new regime, rather than the villain of it.

That said, this coup may well have outcomes similar to those in Egypt, in which power is not wrested from the military regime. The military will _not_ lead a coup only to then throw itself from power. Such a coup would bring reforms, for sure, but many of the opposition would be disappointed. On the other hand, taking down the military regime completely would require a Libya-style sustained insurgency. This is also possible, given in particular a safe base of operations in Turkey, but would absolutely require foreign support in the form of training, serious armaments, and (likely) air support. We'll talk next time about the likelihood of such support.

So, in short: Assad himself is likely not long for his current chains of office. How we define "victory," though, will color our interpretation of the most likely current outcome, which is the military removing Mr. Assad from office.

The Syrian Uprising: Part II, "The Military Reality on the Ground"

Just to make sure I'm adequately managing expectations: the military situation on the ground in Syria is very fuzzy, and is made up of very contradictory reports of government supporters and Free Syrian Army supporters. We'll do what we can.

What we do know is that the Free Syrian Army is now capable of occasionally holding serious bits of territory. The Syrian Army recently took back a big chunk of Damascus suburbs, and the rebels seem to have taken a suburb of Homs.

That said, I don't think this is going to be a territorial war like Libya was (this is closer to "everywhere at once"), nor as much civilian terrorism as Iraq (though that certainly is happening). It is definitely a wide-ranged insurgency, designed to keep the Assad government off its toes and on the defensive. And it may be working: the anti-Assad international community is increasingly excited about supporting it, though nobody has ponied up (officially) yet. (But more on their prospects later.)

It's still tough to figure out the current size of the FSA. The Army itself says their fighters are above 40,000--and with the amount of trouble they're causing over increasingly large areas simultaneously, this may be right. But it's hard to tell. And if they do have 40,000, they won't all be armed. Many will be in support and logistics roles, coordinating ambush-style attacks. But we know that the FSA is capable of hitting and destroying Syrian tanks (which are mostly sitting ducks in city streets against insurgencies), attacking major bases (like airfields), and even setting up roadblocks in areas near Damascus.

But keep in mind: the Iraqi insurgency, which was far larger, better-funded, and better-armed, failed against the US-led coalition and the burgeoning Iraqi military. That said, the Syrian army is not equivalent of the US army, but the will to remain is incredible. Like the Ghaddafi regime, the Assad regime is very unlikely to willingly go until near the end. Assad is very likely less delusional than Ghaddafi, and will therefore call it quits before death, but a prolonged insurgency won't be enough to cause him to voluntarily leave.

In short: the rebel opposition, made up mostly of the Free Syrian Army, is vast, increasingly organized, and has a safe haven in Turkey. It has serious staying power... as long as it is funded (the Syrian army has coffers to pay their soldiers; the FSA does not). We will see many continued months of insurgent attacks against the Syrian army, likely attempting to convince rank-and-file soldiers or even entire companies to defect. The Assad regime does not have total control on the ground, and this should be a matter of serious concern for the regime.

More to come on what this means with respect to the FSA's prospects for victory, but it'll have to wait until next time.

The Syrian Uprising: Part I, "The Nature of the Opposition Movement"

Syria is not Egypt, is not Tunisia, is not Libya, is not Iraq, is not Afghanistan. Getting a sense of the nature of the uprising will require a relatively detailed analysis that requires us to more-or-less throw out any preconceived model we have based on these previous uprisings. Let's take a look.

What we'll discuss over the next few posts:
1) The nature of the opposition movement.
2) The military reality on the ground.
3) Prospects for opposition victory.
4) Options for foreign powers and the directions the conflict could go.

Today, we're discussing: 1) The nature of the opposition movement.
Libya's opposition was largely regional: the east and west were largely separated by vast desert, and had developed very separate identities.
Bahrains was largely religious (Shiites dominated by Sunnis).
Afghanistan's is ethnic (mostly Pashtuns).
Iraq's was both ethnic and religious (Sunni Arabs dominated Shiite Arabs and Sunni Kurds).

Of course, the above descriptions are grossly oversimplified (Tripoli had major protests until they were quashed, for example), but give us an idea of where the base of power of the opposition movements come from.

The opposition movement in Syria appears to be primarily Sunni in nature (which is interesting in that Sunnis are the largest ethnic group in the country and the largest group represented by the government), and regionally diverse. If we use protester deaths as a proxy for the intensity of the opposition activity in Syria, we can see below that we have intense protests in all of Syria's major geographical areas, and that they do not focus on a particular religious area. Interestingly, we also don't see significant unrest in areas of Kurdish majority, which has been the case in neighboring Iraq & Turkey (although the Kurds are demanding greater rights & protection under the government).




There are scattered reports that the protesters have an anti-minority bend, particularly against Christians and Alawites. The opposition is, in turn, accusing the Assad government of inciting religious violence. It's not clear how much sectarian violence is actually happening, and how much of it (that is happening) is government-caused.

The demographic diversity of the movement helps us understand the nature of its political aims. The opposition, beyond calling for Assad to step down, is apparently seeking wider democratic reforms and civil rights. This has, of course, been the banner of the opposition movements in other countries, though the opposition groups do seem to be keeping in line with their original ideas so far.

The question for The West will be: is this an opposition that wants a liberal democracy, or one that wants a more Islamist democracy? The former will tend to be more Western-friendly, and the latter tends to be more at odds with US allies like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Israel. It'll be tough to say--the Muslim Brotherhood definitely has a strong showing in the area, but in Syria, many other faces make up the various oppositions, and all sorts of strange alliances might arise (and, to be fair, the Muslim Brotherhood is relatively moderate).

So, to some extent, there is a wait-and-see on the political reality of this opposition movement, just as there has been in previous revolutions across the Middle East.

But before we think about it too hard, we need to get a good sense of the military reality on the ground in Syria, which we'll discuss next time.